LOCATION AND SANITATION

Taboo the taking of books and papers to the toilet to read. It should be an imperative rule that no other place be used. A little carelessness will cause disagreeable as well as dangerous results. By way of reiteration: First, rigid prohibition of the pollution of the surface of the ground by the strictest rules, diligently enforced. Second, the provision of toilets or latrines of adequate size with proper precaution to prevent the dispersal of excreta by wind, flies, or other agencies. The latrines should be located a distance from camp but not so far as to offer temptation to pollution of the ground. Third, boys should be educated when on hikes or tramps in the old Mosaic Rule laid down in Deuter onomy

Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad: And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee: For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.

Garbage

Garbage, consisting chiefly of trimmings of meat and vegetables and the waste from the table, if stored in open buckets soon becomes offensive and is an ideal breeding place in warm weather for flies "that drink of cesspools, dine at privy vaults, eat sputum and are likely to be the most familiar guests at the dinner table, sampling every article of food upon which they walk, leaving in their tracks dis¬ease-producing germs which have adhered to their sticky feet where they have previously dined." Declare war upon the "fly who won't wipe his feet" by keeping the garbage in a covered galvanized-iron pail and dispose of it before decomposition takes place. Wash and dry the pail after emptying. If the camp is lo¬cated near a farm, give the garbage to the farmer. It is the natural food of swine or poultry. Where this is not possible, the garbage should be buried every day in the earth and covered with three or four inches of dirt. Another and better plan, es¬pecially in a large camp, is the burning of the garbage and human excreta in an incinerator, such as the McCall. This is the method of the United States Army.

Waste Barrels

These barrels should be set upon two strips of wood placed parallel. This per¬mits the air to pass beneath the barrel and keeps its bottom from decaying by contact with the ground. The barrels should be emptied daily and the trash burned. A dirty, carelessly kept, untidy camp will make discipline and order very difficult to attain and the influence will soon be noticed in the careless personal habits of the boys. There is an educational and moral value in cleanliness which is second only to that of good health.

Water Supply

Dr. Charles E. A. Winslow, the noted biologist, is authority for the following statement; [1] "The source of danger in water is always human or ani¬mal pollution. Occasionally we find water which is bad to drink on account of minerals dissolved on its way through the ground or on account of passage through lead pipes, but the danger is never from ordinary decomposing vegetable matter. If you have to choose between a bright, clear stream which may be polluted at some point above, and a pond full of dead leaves and peaty matter, but which you can inspect all around and find free from.

contamination, choose the pond. Even in the woods it is not easy to find surface waters that are surely pro¬tected, and streams particularly are dangerous sources of water supply. We have now got rid of the idea that running water purifies itself. It is standing water which purifies itself, if anything, for in stagnation there is much more chance for the disease germs to die out.

Better than either a pond or stream, unless you can carry out a rather careful exploration of their surroundings, is ground water from a well or spring; though that again is not necessarily safe. If the well is in good sandy soil with no cracks or fissures, even water that has been polluted may be well purified and made safe to drink. In a clayey or rocky region, on the other hand, contaminating material may travel for con¬siderable distance under ground. Even if your well is protected below, a very important point to look after is the pollution from the surface. I believe more cases of typhoid fever from wells are due to surface pollution than to the character of the water itself. This is a danger which can, of course, be done away with by protection of the well from sur¬face drainage, by seeing that the surface wash is not allowed to drain toward it and that it is pro¬tected by a tight covering from the entrance of its own waste water. If good water cannot be secured in any of these ways, the water must be puri-fied. It has been said that what we desire in water supply is innocence and not repentance; but if you cannot get pristine innocence, you can, at least, se¬cure works meet for repentance and make the water safe, by filtering through either a Pasteur or a Berkefeld filter--either of those filters will take out bacteria, while no other filters that I know of will ¬or by various chemical disinfectants, not any of them very satisfactory--or, best of all, by boiling, which will surely destroy all disease germs."

Indians had a way of purifying water from a pond or swamp by digging a hole about one foot across and down about six inches below the water level, a few feet from the pond. After it had filled with water, they bailed it out quickly, repeating the bailing process about three times. After the third bailing the hole would fill with filtered water. Try it.

Drinking Cups

Insist upon the boys bringing to camp a supply of inexpensive paper cups or collapsible pocket drinking cups. Filthy and dangerous diseases are not infrequently transmitted by the use of a common drinking cup.

Paper Drinking Cup.

Take a piece of clean paper about 6 inches square and fold it on the dotted lines, as shown in Figure 1, so as to make a triangle. Do not use paper having anything printed on it, as there is danger of poison from the ink. The other folds are made in the dotted lines, as shown in Figure 2. Each pointed end of the triangle is turned over on one side, as shown in Figure 3, then the sheets of the remaining points are separated and each one folded down on its respective side. This practical idea is furnished by R. H. Lufkin in Popular Mechanics for February, 1911.

Board of Health

Boys should be encouraged to cooperate in keep¬ing the camp clean. A Board of Health may be organized, to be composed of an equal number of boys and camp leaders with the camp physician, or director of the camp as chairman.

LOCATION AND SANITATION
Reviewed by Mboton
on
March 18, 2018
Rating: 5